My Wife Respects Me Less Because I Improved Her Life (The Challenge of Helping Women)
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about the concept of fairness and how it's one of the most fundamental principles in human existence, but it's also the most maligned. What does it mean to be fair in the modern age, and how does it affect our relationships?
Transcript
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this morning we had a conversation that reminded me how unfair life is as a man
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where we were noting that early in our relationship there was a very big because I told you I was
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like I really wasn't that nice to you early in our relationship I was not like as good of a partner
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as conscientious as a partner as I am now um and I pointed out that like it didn't really matter
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because you were way out of my league and there was a huge power distance and I gave him some
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examples of other very powerful men who have women who are great and very happy to be mistreated by him
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just because he's that high in status yes so then she she pointed out but she goes oh but don't worry
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like you've elevated my status since then so I actually require more of you and I was thinking
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about this right like she's not wrong when I first met her she was a social media manager was a degree
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from GW you know now she's got a graduate degree from Cambridge and everything like that and has
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done all this big stuff but back then she basically ran a Facebook account and had a degree from a
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mid-tier university and I was getting a Stanford MBA right and I ran more than a Facebook account but
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yeah I mean I was working in brain computer interface stuff like that I could see the the difference
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there and this is a problem that a lot of guys face is they raise the status of the woman that they
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are dating and they expect her to show a degree of appreciation in the same way that maybe we
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expected Zelensky to show some degree of appreciation for all the money that we've been funneling him
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exactly that there should be some gratitude some sense of indebtedness and and this is exactly
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interestingly not just a problem with women but was like USAID and stuff like that is people don't
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really build like enduring gratitude for shoveling the money or doing them favors unless your fates
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are somehow intermingled so a you know whether it was like USAID this idea that we're actually building
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gratitude in these countries that's just not the case and it brings me back mentally to those capuchin
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monkeys that there was that famous experiment where there's video of a capuchin monkey being given
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some kind of treat in in return for doing a task and he's super cool with it it's all great
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and then he sees his compatriot given a much nicer treat for the same work he's being given cucumbers
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and the compatriot's being given grapes oh the nerve the nerve getting grape and you will see what happens
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so she gives a rock to us that's the task and we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it
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the other one needs to give a rock to us and that's what she does and she gets a grape and she eats it
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the other one sees that she gives a rock to us now gets again cucumber
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she tests the rock now against the wall she needs to give it to us and she gets cucumber again
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and he loses his mind and this is a really great example and illustration of how fairness isn't some
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kind of higher moral good it is a an instinct that we have evolved is species that deal in group
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dynamics and small group environments but i think that this shows how this concept of fairness which
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is also showing up here right that you invested in bettering me and then i just expect you to treat
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me better once i'm at a higher social strata and that we give aid to other countries and that we expect
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them to be nice to us is just us expecting like that capuchin monkey that we're going to be paid in
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grapes in return right like where's my grape and then we freak out when no that's once you leave
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a small troop of monkeys or a tiny clan based village it's over you don't get that dynamic anymore
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fairness is not going to happen and and here i note that you do get it when you're in small groups so
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historically suppose we were in a small medieval town and she like attempted to trade up or something
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like that it would significantly hurt her reputation to the extent that it wouldn't be worth it from her
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perspective and this is why relationships used to be basically on a much easier difficulty mode
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if you're talking about earlier in history so what we wanted to lay out in this video is one how you can
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correct for and control for this inevitable change how you can spot this change where it becomes a problem
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for different types of relationships where people are expecting different things from each other
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that even the oh so moral simone is subject to yeah you know you think oh she's not no she's totally
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subject to it and finally we're going to talk about well i guess how you can make relationships work in
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the modern age yeah so first why don't you detail how this works for you and how you justify it within
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yourself yeah and this is interesting for me to realize that this happened because i want to point out
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that i'm a pretty mercenary person like if someone compliments me i feel the need to immediately
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compliment them in return because otherwise in my mind there's this pending debt on my ledger
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to them and i really don't like that so when anyone does me a favor i get deeply uncomfortable because
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i have to find a way to return it otherwise there's a debt that is outstanding and i can't
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i can't stand it work for your long-term partner though so explain i know so yeah what's going on
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there i feel like there may be some kind of subconscious social status or value i bring to
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the table meter within people that overrides their sense of indebtedness and maybe when you feel like
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you bring more to the table that offsets some of the debt like maybe again i'm just reasoning here and
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when people are asked to reason why they intuit certain things they're just making it up there's
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no i don't actually know what's going on i can i can see what you're saying being true but i don't
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know if that's it i think it's that it's a slow like you we were looking at pictures early in our
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relationship we were like wow we were like kids when we started when we started dating over 10 years ago
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at this point 12 years yeah yeah we met in 2012 and it's 2025 so so a long time ago so anyway when we
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started dating and i say i was not nice to her i was yeah i just i won't say i remember thinking
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actually really explicitly i was like wow this woman like literally would do anything i tell her
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to this is an enormous asset to have around now but i think you saw me as very like disposable or
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like a thrall absolutely absolutely you had no respect for me you were absolutely a thrall who i was
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using for my purposes at the time you were not the first one either um but you were particularly
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obedient and and i was fully aware that this was the case and that's why i wrote letters to myself
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in the future past our promised breakup date being like stay away part of the story
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they're like oh it's so romantic you said you date him if you promise to break up with her
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when there's actually this other layer of like if you know malcolm was malcolm really like romantically
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attached to simone at that point no like no malcolm is ruthless and self-serving if amicable and i wasn't
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gonna screw you over right like even if you're acting you did some things early on which put you in a
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position where i wasn't able to treat you as as disposably as i otherwise would just because you made
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enormous sacrifices in terms of like wealth for me uh like investing in things and putting yourselves
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in like changing career putting my job yeah yeah quitting your job and that's where i was like oh
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shit like i really have to like vampire the masquerade bloodlines where you accidentally get
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the thrall you're like oh now she's like living at my house now i gotta take care of this person
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now i actually feel bad if she gets murdered i gotta deal with this so anyway it created this
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dynamic where in early on i don't know very early on in our relationship you proved yourself to me
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where i was just like wow like she is incredibly efficient incredibly effective and has an incredibly
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high fortitude for work ethic and hours which is what i wanted in a wife and so i was like okay we
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can think about getting married let's let's have that discussion so that was within like four or five
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three months maybe of us knowing each other four or five months of us knowing each other
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seriously talking about marriage well basically we were together from march through july of 2012
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broke up july 31st and then when we were back together by like late september it was clear that
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we were going to get married if we got back together wasn't a super long period and i'll even say early
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in our relationship i wasn't as kind to you either but it would there were the thrall period was fairly
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short only a few months fair but it was a and so you were right to write the letters to yourself in
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the future being yeah i feel like this is not in your best interest long term i was going through
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photo albums to find some photos for a recent video i was editing and i found the album for when
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she first started dating me and it was titled something like is this real life is this real life
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but you know that that was an internet reference right i mean both i was charmed by you but you know
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what i was referring to what were you referencing that boy who's tripping after a dental visit charlie
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is this real life yeah this is real life okay now
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four fingers four fingers so david you wrote that then and then i reflected some of the standards you
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have held me to recently and i was contrasting the two malcolm you know old dark triad malcolm
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yeah versus like modern malcolm right yeah modern takes care of the kids drives them everywhere takes
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them to the doctor puts them to bed at night and i go to her and i go why this difference in standards
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and you're like well my value wasn't very high when she started dating me and now it's really high
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and the reality is is she is functionally correct about this now i'd also note here that i also don't
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really have to worry about her leaving me or betraying me because of how we structured our relationship
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and this is where we need to come to relationship structures and types of relationships so the reason
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i don't need to worry about that is it would be an enormous i i think probably irreconcilable cost
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for you to leave me to leave each other well i mean one because we we have chosen
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a life path and we have a set of values that are the same and we are stronger together than alone so
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there's sort of no way that we could maximize our objective functions more than by being together and
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working i think a better way to put it for a red pill guy is no guy like even a very rich guy
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could bring incrementally more to the table than absolutely not um because then you're dealing
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with the kids you know who you've had with me that you've got to raise with somebody else you're
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dealing with all of the companies that you know you built your reputation building with me
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the podcast the public image of well all that would just get destroyed i mean not the kids obviously but
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all the businesses and stuff that we've done together would just right then you can be like yeah but
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what if the guy was like a billionaire right like what if it was putin or something right
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i i'd say elon but i'd be like uh that's not like you're not getting you're not nailing down elon like
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no one's thinking oh yeah he's gonna stay married to me yeah but whoever it is you would have no reason
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to believe that they would stay invested in you long term so even if they were enormously wealthy
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even if they had an enormous amount of status it still wouldn't be worth it because you wouldn't
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know if they would stay vested in you long term and they yeah um which is another thing which is
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why i say it's useful to own your partner but even when you own your partner they can still leave you
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but there is some like mutual vested interest yeah other thing well continue well i think that the
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bigger thing is sometimes it doesn't make sense to invest in bettering your partner because yes but
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let's talk about when it does make sense to better your partner before we get to this because this is
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like when it does make sense to better your partner is when you and your partner share an
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objective function in life that is to say you share values and morals and the thing that you want to
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maximize in your life and you also more or less agree about the way you want to maximize it this is a
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scenario in which the two of you working together in tandem on this cause on this thing will be much
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more effective than one of you focusing on that and the other one like handling life admin and house and
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kids so it's worth it to invest in that and you can trust that they will utilize the power that
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you've given to them to do to work with you and i think that's another really important thing is i
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would be a little bit more cagey about improving my partner if we had totally separate careers
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but i think the fact that we have always worked together has made it a pretty safe bet for you
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to go out on a limb and invest so much in bettering me because if i perform better we could raise more
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money or get more clients or expand our reach more successfully than if you were just doing that by
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yourself or if i was just doing that by myself so a raise for me is a raise for you and not just in
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terms of our blended income but in terms of our shared projects and the fact that we have what we
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describe the fragment described relationships as a double pygmalion relationship which means that both
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partners core value to the other partner is that they're focused on improving that partner yeah
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in other words in a pygmalion relationship one partner or this can be both partners too so the
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promise is to help you become the version of yourself that you want to be which is how our
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relationship started was just me helping you improve and then and then i i switched around to
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helping him become his full potential self the key important thing with pygmalion relationships
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is you need to make sure there's alignment between your ideal self and your partner's ideal you and i
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think there are a lot of relationships where and i've we've seen this firsthand the one partner's idea
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of a perfect spouse is not what that person wants to be and that is a really uncomfortable situation
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yeah no no you're absolutely right so i think that we've sort of laid this out in general if both of
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your core values to each other is working to improve each other and you work closely together
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or you find ways to work together on the things that are actually important to you the more
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separated your lives are the more raising your partner's status or investing in raising your
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partner's status can blow up in your face especially if you're a male yeah but now let's talk about
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relationships where you don't want to invest in raising your partner's status do you want to go into that
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yeah two percent i think if you have different objective functions it's obvious that you wouldn't
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okay i'll cut to the point here okay the most common time when this is the case is if the woman wants to
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be as you said this morning a a maid and a sex slave or which a lot of women just kind of want to be they
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just want to chill at home and be with their kids and make food and make their house pretty and
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not have to go to work or do anything else and and be beautiful themselves and i think a lot of husbands
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would love that so that's that's a fine match so these relationships can work spectacularly they have a
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few major drawbacks but one is it is not expected for the woman herself for example that the guy raises
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her status within i guess i'd call it like secular society like when i say secular society i don't mean
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non-theological society i mean like within the general world like within business or politics or
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anything else and actually a problem that i have seen in these relationships is when the wife decides to
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get a hobby like social media and then gets famous on her own while the husband is supporting her
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and it augments her status i see a lot of divorces after that happens oh yeah i was wondering if that
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happens yeah because i don't know social media influencer like trad wives and stuff like that they end up
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getting too famous and then they are like hey i'm famous now and i could significantly upgrade and my fame
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really doesn't have anything to do with you and we have what like two kids so it's not that hard to trade
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for somebody else and yeah like technically she did it without her husband and so she doesn't need him
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at all yeah this is a not a great position to end up in and so it is useful if your partner is
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building social media even if you are out working and stuff like that that you ensure that you are
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part of that brand because the more integrated into the brand you are the more cost there is to her
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attempting to trade up yeah like i think good examples of this are obviously ballerina farms
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where you have a couple that is promoting a family business their their dairy and their protein powder
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and their farm and their meats and their flowers and their frozen croissant dough and another example
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is like comedy youtuber named jane williamson and her husband chris williamson he features frequently
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in her videos and skits but also he runs a like fintech bro influencer agency company okay so it's adjacent
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you know he manages the monetization of of finance influencers online but that also enables him to
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i think really skillfully queue up monetization and sponsorship deals for his wife jane
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and that makes them work together really well and i think her cachet as an influencer gives him
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credibility as well that like he even lives with an influencer he does content with an influencer
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regularly so when finance influencers are talking with him they're not like talking with someone who
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doesn't even know what they're doing you know how much work they put into everything so i think these
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are really good examples where and i think otherwise jane and actually both are mormon
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so hannah nealman with ballerina farms and jane williamson they're all mormon so they the wives
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started out as housewives they didn't plan on necessarily getting a degree so this is i think
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is a really good example of how they started to develop careers organically by posting online and just
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enjoying it but i think it is an example of how that dynamic can be made sustainable and quite
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profitable for the entire family while also bringing the couple closer together well i also think that the
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status difference between partners is something that some women who are choosing this role prefer
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and it makes following orders or doing things for the husband more satisfying than it would be if it
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didn't exist well i think the status difference that needs to remain is the husband still has to
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somehow have more control or or power with money because this is just kind of a different version
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of the woman being beautiful and the man being resource rich but in you know in the case of
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ballerina farms you have a husband who is from a wealthy family and with jane and chris williamson chris is
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the one who handles sponsorship and money and you know i think that's the whole thing is i disagree with
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what you're saying here i think what you need is a perception of power difference and i think what
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you are undervaluing is for many women in this position sometimes a thing can be a sex thing without
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being a sex thing by that what i mean is things like the amount of internal bristling that you feel
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when somebody gives you an order or tells you to do something or expect something of you in terms of
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like you know making dinner or something like that is going to be correlated to what is related to an
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arousal pathway which is the dominance and submission pathways they're all yeah the wires are right there
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next to each other yeah if you don't see them as well that's why it ends up moving into the bed
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moving into the world moving into the bed they're very it's the same basic neural circuitry if you do not
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see your husband as differentially status than you then you are going to get negative emotional
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stimuli when he expects things of you or expects to be treated as if he is a different status yeah it
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feels gross it feels gross and pathetic and then resentment is built yeah yeah it's amazing how
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resentment doesn't doesn't even have to be a result of i guess a legitimate grievance it could be the
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result of merely asking for something but being lower status that's really interesting yes and
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these women they don't necessarily mean to feel this way but it makes them less happy with their lives
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that they are given more status and i think as a result of this and this is one of the interesting
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things for me while i do think that housewives should be respected in like a broad sense i think
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that treating the career as significantly lower in status than going out and working during the day
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is actually in the best interest of the well-being of most housewives like oh yeah to suppose like
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make them feel satisfied with their relationship because otherwise they won't be yeah so like suppose your
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husband works at the patent office or something like that he supplies for the family it's a safe government
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job but like that's not high status was in society right and that might lead to a wife expecting things
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or concessions from the husband that can cause fundamental issues with their relationship
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that resonates yeah i i simultaneously struggle with that because of course on the
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prenatalism front we're trying to make parenthood a higher status and more desirable no i think what
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you're missing here is we need to erase the stigma around wanting to be a subservient housewife
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the the problem is is you see only high status is the only thing that women would want and that's
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just like objectively not true there are multiple pathways that women might desire from life as you see
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if you look at things like well i guess and within religious communities too that are conservative being
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a properly properly subservient housewife is that source of status and i think a lot of feminists
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if you watch videos of them like crying over the fact that oh my gosh like i just want to be a wife i
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like why am i being a slave and humiliated by my corpo boss who doesn't care about me when my husband
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could be treating me half is bad and this is the thing when i talk about like differences in status
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that i think is is really when you talk to your average progressive female you're like you would
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want like a husband to like sometimes like expect things of his wife or like give her orders and i'm
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like yeah but keep in mind that this is a dramatically better treatment than she would be getting in just
00:24:10.820
about any office job that that's that's what we're talking about here we're not talking about like
00:24:16.540
1950s or whatever but we're talking about at least having expectations which are differential within the
00:24:23.940
or like a level of deference yes and i mean the the way for example it works in our relationship is you
00:24:34.840
have the final call on everything and we know that because we we know your judgment is more reliable
00:24:39.040
there and more trustworthy like it's it's merit-based as well but if your judgment was
00:24:43.760
better i still wouldn't you have to listen to me i'm sorry simone that's what we agreed to when we
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signed the marriage contract that's where we are you we agreed to it for a reason no here's the here's
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the problem though and i think this is another reason why people are having more trouble forming
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marriages is women can't just be like oh i'm gonna marry a guy and just let him take the wheel
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she has to to know that he's trustworthy and men do actually have to earn that and there's no
00:25:17.360
closing your eyes and just kind of hoping it's okay um well this is a huge problem with trad
00:25:22.260
relationships as we pointed out earlier this morning is especially for women they can be
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incredibly vulnerable if the guy plans to just trade you out or dramatically increase expectations
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of you as the relationship goes on yeah because here's the problem so there's that dynamic of
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okay well when women are younger if they if they see a jump in status they may leave in in a flight of
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hypergamy but there's the other issue of once the kids are out of the house what is stopping the now
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very resource rich end of career or end mid of career husband from leaving her with nothing after
00:26:01.740
she's well there's another problem which i think this is what happened to laura thusden is you you
00:26:07.060
get a really bad economic situation in which the longer the woman is with the guy even if she hasn't
00:26:12.580
been with him for a long time like let's say two years three years five years now she's got a five
00:26:17.060
year resume gap her economics reliance on him increases basically logarithmically the longer she is
00:26:24.200
in this role and some guys utilize that to increase the demands and decrease the treatment of the of the
00:26:31.320
yeah good point so there are a lot of challenges with this and the key defense against these
00:26:38.580
challenges are communities that will hold the other individual to account like being in a orthodox
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jewish community or being in a you know a strict catholic community or something like that then i'd
00:26:49.920
mentioned this phenomenon in some orthodox jewish communities like if a guy divorces too easily
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other women will go on sex strikes with their husbands to try to force the other men to force this guy
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to treat his wife better or follow the the rules better or not like randomly divorce it's it's weird
00:27:03.860
and it's yeah i found that hard to believe but you point out this is a common thing it's like something
00:27:08.800
that's happened like a number of times recently and there's been news stories about it but anyway
00:27:11.900
wow um actually the episodes i was thinking of are for the inverse reason orthodox jewish women
00:27:17.060
typically go on sex strikes to force husbands to allow other women to divorce who want to divorce
00:27:23.080
because in orthodox jewish law only the husband can decide on the issue of divorce so they do this to
00:27:30.560
try to pressure other men in the community to forcibly make the divorce happen there there there is some
00:27:38.360
value here but the big problem is just how easy it is to like scram like okay so suppose i'm in a
00:27:43.620
catholic community in one neighborhood that's like really devout and i divorce my wife or leave my wife
00:27:50.080
and i can just like fly to london and go to another devout catholic community or fly across the state
00:27:57.520
and go to another devout catholic community find a new wife and there's not going to be the same you
00:28:02.260
know actual external punishment for this or loss in status for this about the only religion that
00:28:07.760
really effectively implements this loss of status are mormons because they've got the central church
00:28:13.920
which i think sort of notifies people you know this person left his partner where they don't think
00:28:19.420
well and you also can't really easily divorce people you're kind of sealed to them for life
00:28:25.600
yeah yeah i mean that's why mormons would be like hey it is sealed for life like yeah yeah i don't know
00:28:31.180
if orthodox jews are good at this i feel like their communities are a little too disparate where you just
00:28:36.660
go to a slightly different faction of judaism and now there's no connection that would be my concern
00:28:40.280
absolutely yeah yeah so i don't know what would you do like what if our daughters wanted to
00:28:47.980
focus on being a homemaker and raising and homeschooling kids at home which is a very
00:28:55.080
valuable thing to do i mean if you're homeschooling and you have a lot of kids one of the parents has
00:28:59.620
to be home there's no value differential right you how do we have her protect yourself what does that
00:29:05.880
mean what does it mean you have you have the husband you'd be like look if you're taking this
00:29:09.660
lifestyle you need to be a fairly dedicated member of the church the techno puritan church okay so you
00:29:15.100
need to enforce social punishment on the well and remember the way that the church works if you watch
00:29:24.880
the pragmatist guide to governance which we haven't really talked about this in any of the tracks or
00:29:28.280
anything like that is voting power is gained through the amount that you're investing in it and and
00:29:33.400
and status is gained with the amount that you invest in it so an individual who was close to
00:29:38.360
the church basically the church would have a control of some portion of their wealth and would be feeding
00:29:43.680
it back to them in a way that is of high utility to them in terms of upward social mobility but they
00:29:49.180
wouldn't be able to just cut and run on a partner like there's multiple reasons you build systems like
00:29:56.020
this okay yeah we need we need to work on it but i yeah we need that definitely we can't
00:30:03.940
this is an imperfect system and and policing it is is hard i don't think it's an imperfect system at
00:30:10.740
all i think it's actually a really good system if a couple's income is still controlled by them while
00:30:17.660
they're together but it goes to the one who was effed over not by the state because the state is very
00:30:23.780
bad at deciding this yeah but by a religious organization that's going to be really powerful
00:30:30.060
at preventing couples from splitting up i could see that yeah yeah if the religious community lives
00:30:37.400
and works close together especially i think if you know this is a remote living and working
00:30:43.900
couple and or family that lives in a totally different part of the world and they don't have much
00:30:49.360
you need to increase the externality on splitting up having like having like losing wealth or losing
00:30:56.200
status because you broke up is a huge way to implement that yeah but i'm saying if this is a he said
00:31:03.180
she said situation and the church in this case doesn't have much access to the couple's lives and
00:31:10.100
inner workings then it's really hard i think i disagree with this yeah why i i do not think anything
00:31:16.980
is ever a he said she said situation i think generally you can get a fairly good idea of what
00:31:22.480
was going on um and that you are always going to be better than the state oh yeah that's the woman
00:31:30.120
well no i think more broadly too the state will do what is necessary to reduce its odds of having to pay
00:31:41.940
for any children that are involved and i think one of the reasons why it basically forces the man
00:31:47.880
to pay for the woman and gives the children to the woman is if the woman doesn't have the children
00:31:53.080
i think it the state sees higher odds that the kids end up in the foster system and the state has to
00:31:57.420
pay for them yeah does that make sense so they're just trying to reduce financial liability
00:32:02.020
so by essentially making the man fund the care of the child while the woman does the care of the
00:32:09.700
child they can guarantee that they're not going to have to pay for the care of the child and handle
00:32:13.420
it themselves yeah whereas a church could say actually both of you are a-holes the children
00:32:19.620
and the money are going to some other family oh my god um well no i mean i think that that's an
00:32:26.360
important like you need divorce to be costly yeah no divorce divorce should be more costly i don't know
00:32:33.800
threatening to take away children is the right thing and i think getting upstream of divorce is
00:32:41.500
also really important um well it's interesting anyone here who's like i'm thinking about getting
00:32:46.260
married because we know some people are considering to get married within techno puritan tradition
00:32:49.480
and you want to utilize this and i point out it's a service it's not like we're taking your money or
00:32:54.220
something like that it's a service because it is useful in increasing the cost of divorce
00:32:59.540
and because it is a religious institution there actually might be some tax benefits to doing it
00:33:04.680
this way basically well i guess you're putting the assets of the family into a trust yeah making
00:33:11.760
the religion or you could choose any person you want the executor of that trust in the event of
00:33:18.600
divorce do it you could do it as a trust or you could do it as non-profit donations that would have
00:33:25.400
a disproportionate uh likelihood given the way things are structured of going to your kid's
00:33:31.200
education your kid's well-being your kids like whatever you wanted for your family basically you
00:33:36.820
would section it off like these non-profit donations are dedicated to this clan or this
00:33:42.580
faction of the tradition and the money goes back out which would allow it to be basically donated into a
00:33:49.220
non-profit religious institution but in a way where the family still benefited from the donations
00:33:54.260
so long as the benefits were not for hedonism like you would have you know regulations on how the
00:34:00.100
benefits could be doled out which would make it religious in nature but it's also probably what
00:34:04.600
the family would want anyways for like long-term nest egg stuff like only for like education self-improvement
00:34:11.280
businesses and health related stuff yeah and then you could have it go out intergenerationally
00:34:18.860
especially with large amounts of money so that you wouldn't have to deal with a death tax
00:34:22.420
yeah well i mean in general what we see some people doing is to whatever extent they can
00:34:30.660
circumventing their income so almost nothing actually goes to them and when they're paid by
00:34:36.160
other entities those payments actually go in the form of equity or cash to other organizations so this
00:34:43.680
person isn't paying tax they don't technically have a high net worth and yet they control these
00:34:48.920
organizations that have received the money i'd also point out sorry this may not be clear to people
00:34:54.980
we the the church is actually approved by the irs irs all right well i love you simone i know that you
00:35:02.300
have no allegiance to me anymore you're only with me because of the cost to you no i think the more
00:35:07.440
important thing is is i am you and you are me and people don't realize that culture and religion can
00:35:16.620
do that to people they i think everyone's so stuck in their own identity and their own brand now that
00:35:22.280
they don't realize that you're not necessarily looking for a spouse you're looking to expand the
00:35:29.260
concept of you which just sounds exactly no as i say she's just like my female avatar like even the
00:35:34.500
idea of being trans is so weird because i'm like i've got a girl body it's right there i have a girl
00:35:38.920
body i have a boy body like what's the problem here what's the problem here i want to be a girl
00:35:45.980
avatar in a game i just make my wife like yeah i i got a girl body i i have full access to like what
00:35:56.820
i guess the bigger thing is is how also you and your partner grow together and it i think it's really
00:36:06.600
really hard when you're looking for someone older because it's really hard to grow into one identity
00:36:11.460
with someone but i i do think it happens like i think that for example my dad and his girlfriend
00:36:18.100
have sort of melded into one person you know what i mean yeah and they met after my mom passed away
00:36:24.100
so it can still absolutely happen i think it just kind of comes down to personality compatibility
00:36:29.300
shared values and the way that you live together and what you want to do with your lives so
00:36:34.140
i would say though basically the gist of this is don't ever expect someone to think that
00:36:39.920
they owe you because you made them better whether you are a country giving aid to someone else or you
00:36:47.900
are a partner making your other partner better i have a question for you yeah different status now
00:36:53.200
am i less hot now because i'm not higher status than you differentially i think you're still higher
00:36:58.480
status um no no no but the differential status difference is lower than when we started dating
00:37:05.080
yeah most women that would make me less attractive so i'm less attractive now than when we started
00:37:10.040
dating well no because you got hotter like physically so it's complicated malcolm you're in the wash
00:37:17.280
yeah you're yeah and and you're more you're more successful now so that's also very attractive
00:37:22.800
like you've been very successful at what you said you wanted to do when we first met it's kind of
00:37:28.740
crazy so you are definitely more desirable i said i wanted to take over the world how far are we from
00:37:34.820
your baby steps baby steps okay i love you to decimone have a great day bye
00:37:42.260
what is going on are you wading through the pile of cans in your room
00:38:00.740
simone simone there's a reason why people don't trust women anymore
00:38:08.600
i can't believe octavian's note for the teacher i love you and i want to kiss you
00:38:16.280
why did you is that actually what he wanted to say to her
00:38:30.980
i'm terrified of forgetting i'm basically narcoleptic
00:38:55.380
remember every piece you find gets you closer to finishing the puzzle